1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a substrate processing apparatus and a substrate processing method for consecutively processing substrates.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the manufacturing process of a semiconductor device, a batch processing, in which a plurality of semiconductor wafers are processed simultaneously, and a single wafer processing, in which semiconductor wafers are processed one by one, are selected appropriately in accordance with, for example, the kind of the processing and the number of semiconductor wafers to be processed.
For example, Japanese Patent Disclosure (Kokai) No. 10-335298 discloses a processing system comprising a plurality of process units for consecutively performing a plurality of different kinds of processing that deeply relates to each other with respect to a semiconductor wafer, and a transfer means for transferring the semiconductor wafer among these process units. The particular processing system was constructed in the past to include as a plurality of process units a plurality of batch process units alone or a plurality of single wafer process units alone.
However, various materials have come to be used in recent years for the manufacture of a semiconductor device. In this connection, various new processing methods have come to be proposed. Such being the situation, where a plurality of different kinds of processing are carried out consecutively, a large difference in the processing time is generated depending on the kind of the processing that is carried out. If the particular processing is carried out by the conventional processing system quoted above, a serious problem is generated that the through-put of the entire processing system is lowered.
It may be possible to prevent the through-put of the entire processing system from being lowered by constructing a single processing system such that the number of process units for carrying out a processing requiring a long processing time is larger than the number of process units for carrying out a processing that does not require a long processing time. In this case, however, it is unavoidable for the entire processing system to be rendered bulky. Also, the number of process units included in the processing system is increased so as to render costly the processing system. Further, an additional problem is generated that the construction and the control relating to the supply and the discharge of the processing fluid used in each of the process units are rendered complex, with the result that good processed articles are unlikely to be obtained.